Subject or Object?

Subject or Object?

Fourth in a series of sermons from Ephesians

Robert J. Elder, Pastor

20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

August 16, 2009

Ephesians 5:15-33

One summer, I was riding through the Scottish countryside with my cousin, Malcolm and his wife, Muriel. They have a highly kinetic relationship, so a good deal of good-natured bantering was going back and forth between them. Finally, Muriel had spoken maybe a little more sharply than she might have intended, and there was a moment or two of uncomfortable silence. Then Malcolm spoke up, “Muriel, I know you love me; you told me so five years ago.” Without missing a beat, Muriel replied with mock seriousness, “That was then; this is now…” Referring to marriage in a sermon in our day, even in an oblique way, is among a preacher’s greatest fears...and with good reason!

Several years ago, on Orientation Sunday in Duke University Chapel, the text assigned to the preacher ... was ... Ephesians 5:21. The preacher’s heart sank. “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands...”

“I can’t preach that,” the preacher thought. “Only the likes of Jerry Falwell would preach such a text! Especially is it an inappropriate text for a progressive, forward-thinking, university church. Forget Ephesians 5. The word for our day is liberation, not submission. But the preacher decided to let the Bible have its say. He began his Orientation sermon this way:

“[We] despise this text. No one but Jerry Falwell (may he rest in peace) or some other reactionary would like this text. What an ugly word! Submission. And yet we know that, taken in the context of the day, this is a radical word. Women had no standing in that day. The writer of Ephesians 5 expends more words giving advice to husbands, telling them about their duties to wives, than words to wives telling them what they are to do for their husbands...this is not a text about women’s submission in marriage, it is a text which urges mutual submission in a strange new social arrangement called the church.”

“And that is why we despise this text. Our word is liberation.”[1]

While scripture’s word is submission.

There is so much modern misunderstanding about this passage of scripture that our lectionary suggests preachers skip verses 21-33 altogether. Even less likely is a modern day sermon on the first 9 verses of chapter 6, with their emphasis on obedience in children and slaves. The use – and abuse – to which these verses have been put in many places and circumstances over the centuries, makes any preacher less than enthusiastic about preaching on them.

So, we have a whole section of scripture, much of which sounds immediately distasteful to modern ears, with words about subjection and submissiveness, directed at wives, children and slaves. Aren’t these verses a perfect example of the need to use the Thomas Jefferson method of scripture analysis, cutting out the passages which offend us in order to leave us with a Bible that is not only more agreeable, but which more closely reflects modern sensibilities?

Well, no, I don’t think so, though you are welcome to disagree with me, and if you do it certainly wouldn’t be the first time in my ministry! What is needed is the recognition of a few crucial principles in reading these verses.

I

Only a community of faith which receives these words

can hope to understand them correctly.

These words were not directed at the culture in general, but to believers whom together Paul calls the “body of Christ.” So, a real understanding requires, first of all, a life within the community of faith. These are not general human principles which would make sense to any thinking person whether they were believers or not. They sound crazy to non-believers, and, truth-be-told, to quite a few believers as well, and probably for good reason.

It makes no sense to urge non-believers to allow themselves to be subject to others, because in the world outside the family of faith, where power is the motivating force in most relationships, to suggest that people assume a powerless and subjective position would be tantamount to suggesting that they become permanent victims. There is no guarantee of mutuality there. Being subject in a world that treats people like objects doesn’t sound like good news but more like a prescription for servitude. No one in the world can assume that submissiveness on their own part will be met with mutual submissiveness from others. Quite the contrary. The world is entirely likely to victimize anyone who makes themselves so vulnerable.

We must grant that pursuing all relationships with a sense that they are about power is a way that leads to death, not life. But only a community of faith organized around a different standard can understand submissiveness in a way that leads to life and wholeness.

II

These verses may legitimately be understood

only with deep humility, convictionally and confessionally.

They are intended to be understood so that a spouse, for instance, may ask himself for herself from time to time, “Am I working toward loving my spouse as Christ loved the church, sacrificially, unselfishly?” They may legitimately be used reflectively, subjectively. They may not be used legitimately as a blunt object to threaten the opposite person, but rather as a personal moral guide.

So when, in Paul’s letter, husbands, for instance, are advised concerning their behavior, they are not permitted to ignore the verses directed at them while berating their mates concerning the verses Paul wrote regarding wives. Similarly, wives ought not read the verses directed at husbands as part of a riot act, while overlooking the admonitions Paul wrote to them.

There are those interpreters who attempt to show that these verses reveal a divinely ordained order for family relationships, with God at the top of the organizational chart, then husbands directly under God, with wives appearing under the rule of their husbands. I have seen this type of structure referred to with various headings like “God’s Chain of Command,” as though loving relationships among faithful people had mostly to do with organizing a power structure in which some give commands and others obey them. The odd thing is, the chain of command idea already existed in Paul’s time, though not as a guide for Christian living, but as a pagan listing of household responsibilities. In Ephesians, Paul called upon everyone’s familiarity with that idea in order to help believers break free from it, to move human relationships beyond the banal questions of who will be giving the orders and who is destined to take them.

The discipline encouraged in this passage is meant to be internal, chosen, not external and enforced; it is to be subjective, not objective. No one may legitimately use these verses to force subjection on an unwilling spouse, and neither may one use them to require sacrificial love from their “better half.” I recently read about a Christian speaker who was approached by a married couple with the husband asking, “I want to know who should be in charge of a Christian marriage?” The speaker looked at them and said, “But that’s not a Christian question! The Christian question is: ‘How can I serve my spouse…?’”[2]

These are principles which must be freely chosen to have any meaning at all. And the operative principle in all of them is announced in verse 21.

III

“Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

It is true that every home needs a leader, but the contest for that position should not be between one spouse and the other. The leader of every believer’s home should be Jesus Christ: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,” Paul declared. It is Christ who is the one deserving reverence in Christian homes.

All the things Paul encourages in his letter: that husbands love their wives as fully as Christ loves the church, which is to say, as fully as one who was willing to face death on a cross for the sake of his love; that wives should subject themselves to their husbands, which anyone who has been around our culture lately knows has about as much human chance of getting a hearing these days as a shellfish in a oyster bar; all these things should be things we hear with amazement, not with nodding heads. They are incredible, from a human point of view. But before we can hold up our hands and say, “No way!”, before we even hear words about submissiveness and sacrificial love, Paul predetermines our view of his instructions with the first instruction, the one that supersedes them all: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

He explains further, “This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church.” This isn’t an exhortation about how we can be if we just work at it, but about how Christ is. Christ was submissive even to the point of death, Christ loves his church – loves us – more than he loved his own life. It is only because we know that’s how Christ is that we can begin to see the mystery that Paul mentions as it applies to our own commitments – how we can be. We begin to see that the commitments we make to one another – not just as husbands and wives, but as lovers, as friends, as families in the fellowship of the church – these commitments are going to be hopelessly control driven unless we submit them to the one who was totally submissive in giving himself away for us all.

Christ will not fail to honor those who reverence his submission for our sakes. “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” For Christ has made himself subject for our sakes. May God bless us richly in him, and may each of us strive in every way to be a blessing for each other.

---

[1] William Willimon, Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Abingdon, 1989, pp. 152-153.

[2] Stephen Knox, “Becoming One Christ’s Way,” Best Sermons 2, Harper & Row, 1989, p. 179.

Speaking Truth, Speaking Love

Speaking Truth, Speaking Love

Third in a series from Ephesians

Robert J. Elder, Pastor

19th Sunday of Ordinary Time: August 9, 2009

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Dear Abby: “My mother-in-law has moved in with us. I am not sure if I can continue to take her constant comments about my housekeeping and my cooking. Every time we go out to eat, she is critical of the expense, yet when we eat at home, the food we prepare is never up to her standards. My husband says I should just appreciate how much she did for him when he was growing up and think of this time she is with us as our opportunity to return the favor. Abby, she didn’t raise me! It’s getting harder every day to bite my tongue and avoid lashing out at her. What should I do? Sign me ‘Boiling in Boise’.”

Dear Abby: “My wife’s best friend is over at our house all the time, and I am getting sick of it. She has been out of work for over 18 months, so she whines to my wife about it constantly, and my wife gives her groceries and even some spending money out of the little bit that we are able to bring home from our jobs. This woman has had several opportunities to go to work to pay some of her bills, but she just won’t get motivated. My wife says we should help her out, because she has children at home and they shouldn’t starve just because their mother is lazy. Worst of all, we have been finding little items missing from the house after she has been here, like my wife’s pearl brooch and a radio I keep in the garage. Not too long ago, my wife found a several of our CD’s at her ‘friend’s’ house, which she said she had just ‘borrowed.’ Abby, I want to be compassionate, but this is just too much. How should we deal with this? Sign us ‘Desperate in Des Plaines’.”

Dear Abby: “My friend, I’ll call him ‘Ned,’ never has a nice word to say about anybody. I like Ned, but every time we get together, the conversation always turns to the things that are wrong with all the people he knows. I have heard him heap abuse on some people that I know pretty well, and they aren’t nearly as bad as he makes them out to be. He seems so bitter, but it’s like his hobby: gossiping about other people seems to be the thing he’d rather talk about than anything else. I’ve begun to wonder what he says about me when he’s with other people. How can I help Ned get a better attitude? Sign me ‘Slandered in St. Louis’.”

If you were Abby, or her daughters, or whoever is writing the column now, how would you respond to these letters? Abby might trot out her laundry list of time-worn advice-column items. To “Boiling in Boise,” she might respond with the old “No one can take advantage of you without your permission. You need to tell your mother-in-law how you feel, and your husband needs to back you up...” To “Desperate in Des Plaines,” Abby might say, “Unload this so-called ‘friend’ pronto! She needs counseling...” She might advise “Slandered in St. Louis,” “Ned’s got a real problem with his self-esteem. He needs counseling, and as his friend, you should suggest it to him. Why not leave a copy of this column under his plate the next time you have lunch together…?”

We all value truthful speaking, but only to a certain extent. We hear people say, “Isn’t she refreshingly candid?” or “At least you don’t have to guess where he stands.” Of course, some people are just characteristically negative, no matter what light we throw on it. But we also know people who can be candid – that is, speak the insightful truth as they see it – in an unvarnished yet positive way.

I think Paul received similar questions from people in the churches he started, but he had something behind his answers that set them apart from any advice column. Abby and Ann Landers and all the rest have given a list of do’s and don’ts over the years that look very similar to Paul’s:

DO:

1. Speak the truth
2. Acknowledge your anger
3. Labor and work honestly
4. Share with the needy
5. Say what is useful for building up
6. Be kind to one another
7. Forgive one another
8. Live in love

DON’T:

1. Lie
2. Let the sun set on your anger
3. Steal
4. Engage in trashy talk
5. Grieve the Holy Spirit
6. Be bitter, wrathful, angry, quarrelsome, slanderous, malicious

But as Paul writes us these words of advice which sound like advice we might get anywhere, we might write back: “Dear Paul, you told us we should do this and that, but why should we?” Signed, “Effective in Ephesus.”

Paul’s response is the place where we begin to realize that, for all its similarities to a modern list of good advice for moral behavior, Ephesians is so much more than that. Why should we try to walk by principles such as the ones listed here? Because of these two sentences: “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us...” It’s very unlikely that we will see those lines in any upcoming newspaper advice columns.

We should strive to live a new life, not because Abby said that by trying harder we can be effective. Our trying may never be effective. But it is empowered by the knowledge that we are called to act toward others the way God acted toward us. We must speak the truth in love because we are members of one another in the same sense that an arm or a leg is a member of the body. One member of a body trying to deceive another is senseless. Someone once said that the New Testament does not give us directions, but direction. When we fail to live up to the code established for us and begin to wonder why we should try, the gospel directs us toward Jesus, who gave up everything in order that we might know the love of God.

Why act a way that is different from all other people? Because that is the way God is. One little side note, since this is the Bible passage that includes the proverbially famous line about not letting the sun go down on anger. The admonition sounds like a command: “Be angry, but do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Actually, it needs to be heard more this way: “You may be angry, if you can’t help it, but don’t let that anger become an obsession,” one nursed to the point that makes it a fixation, an immovable object in the way of reconciling with others and imitating Christ, who, after all, prayed even for those who took up hammers and nails to attach him to the cross. Anger is admitted as a natural emotion, but upon recognition, it calls for a decision. Paul tells us to decide the way Christ did.

Tennyson’s poem, Maud, includes the line

And ah for (one) to arise in me,

that the (one) I am may cease to be!

The one who may arise in us is none other than Jesus Christ, Son of God, Christ in us. It is a prayer that we might decrease so that Christ might increase in us.

Built in Love

Robert J. Elder, Pastor
18th Sunday of Ordinary Time: August 2, 2009

Ephesians 4:1-16

Paul concludes this little passage by referring to the church as a fellowship in the process of, “building itself up in love.” He had completed a couple of paragraphs describing the gifts of believers as something like individual bricks, which may be used to help build the one church. His repeated calls for unity throughout the passage lead me to believe that in his time he was aware of churches in which the commitment to the fellowship was coming in second to individual commitments to a “do your own thing” religious faith.

When Paul described the ideal church as one which is “building itself up in love,” he used agapé, the New Testament word that stands for a dispassionate care which takes the needs of the other(s) into account before the needs of self. Other types of love — phileo: brotherly love, eros: erotic love — are more commonly understood in our culture, they are types of love which are heavily endowed with emotional content. The way we feel about someone has a lot to do with whether we will have brotherly, or, especially, erotic love for them.

Agapé is not like that. Agapé is a love which leaves emotion aside and makes a decision. It is a love that says no matter what happens — you can spit in my eye — I will still seek to do and be what is best for you as I see it. It is the quintessential committed love, while the others come and go with the ebb and flow of our emotions.

This is all fine and good, but how do we go about “building in love”? What are the building blocks of such a church? There are some great words describing the actions of God in regard to us in this passage: Calling, unifying, gifting, maturing, building. Let’s listen for their implications for our life together.

Calling. So many people believe that “calling” is a word applied to people who take up religious vocations, but that “regular” Christians just have jobs. That’s not the way Paul thinks of it here. Paul did not say he begged pastors to “live a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called...” His words are addressed to all believers. Every Christian has a calling from God. Do we know what our callings are, each of us? If we don’t and would like to, it should be the subject of prayer with our families or prayer groups, so that we might get a better understanding of what God is trying to call us to do. Paul outlines the marks of one who has undertaken his or her calling. Such a life will be marked by humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, just the opposite characteristics from those which many of our workaday “jobs” require of us. Our calling takes the community into account first, while mere employment is so commonly marked by “what’s in it for me?”

It’s amazing to think about: the creator of the world, the one who flung the planets into their orbits and invented the platypus and the peregrine falcon, the ferns and the fir trees, who sent a comet crashing into Jupiter, this very one calls us. Surely we must answer.

I have a friend, a former Marine, who said that ever since his days in the service when he walked on board aircraft carriers, he thought of the church as similar to those great ships. An aircraft carrier is not a place where people come to sit and stay and ring the bell for service. It is a place to get refueled, to gather up ammunition, to get attention for wounds if need be, but ultimately a place from which to depart on a specific mission.

One building block of our loving fellowship must include a sense of the particular piece of this church’s ministry to which God is calling each of us.

Unifying. Paul felt so strongly about the need for unity in the church, he wrote of oneness over and over, like a mantra: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God...One, one, one.

This building block of our faith is so critical, especially in our world of increasing factionalism, where every denomination, political movement, and cult claims to have the corner on the message of Christ to the exclusion of all others. Celebrations of diversity — for all the good they represent — sometimes threaten in our time to become declarations of hopeless division. To take Paul’s meaning, we must believe that if we have not found the faith, baptism, Spirit, hope, Lord that unites us with other believers, we have not yet found the faith of Christ, not fully. That faith in its highest form should pull us together into the body with other believers, not drive us apart into endless wrangling over fine points of doctrine and detail. Those beliefs and movements which overemphasize human distinctions or tend to divide the community of faith are, in a deep way, antithetical to the essence of God’s will for the church.

To commit together to unity, even when we don’t feel like it, is part of the meaning of agapé love, one of the building blocks of a loving fellowship, which must seek unity.

Gifting. To develop unity in the body of the church, we are each given gifts: The equipment of the saints. That’s the way Paul described the gifts that are given to believers by the One in whom they have come to believe. Every sport needs its own equipment. Hardly any calling in our world comes without some special equipment. People who do word processing need computers; athletes need all manner of paraphernalia specific to their sport; carpenters need hammers and woodworking tools; auto mechanics need great cabinets with drawers full of tools to work on our cars; physicians and nurses need x-ray machines, lab equipment, stethoscopes; attorneys need access to vast libraries of law books; musicians need copies of the score and instruments; preachers need long black robes to keep their shapeless bodies from distracting from the message they proclaim.

The gifts of God are the tools needed to equip the saints. That’s you. Did you realize you were a saint? Sure you are, that’s what Paul says you are. And you need equipment to go about your saintly business on behalf of the one who calls you. And the equipment you lack, you may be sure is provided to someone close by, so that together, you may be a complete church which can witness, prophesy, teach, and care for each other and the world in which we find ourselves.
Another building block of our loving fellowship includes the equipment or gifts which God has given us to get our work done. Whatever we find ourselves capable of doing for the sake of the church, we must be sure to do.

Maturing (growing up). Paul says that gifts God gives to us are for one purpose: to bring unity and maturity into the fellowship called the church. How do we spot a fellowship which is immature? Paul gives an example: “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.”
Sometimes I think there isn’t a frail wind of speculative doctrine which the church has been able to resist. Theology and Hope; Christianity and the Current Crisis; Theology and Liberation; Reimagining God; The Death of God; Theology as Pastoral Counseling; Salvation through the purchase of Indulgences; one after another they come down the pipe and the church grabs on, hoping this will at last be the corner of the gospel which will save the rest, make it relevant or understandable enough to modern people. And yet time after time, the little corner of the gospel that these represent cannot stand in for the whole thing. For that we need all the gifts of God’s people, not just itty bitty particulars of this or that theological speculation.

Maturity, in Paul’s view, seems to require an ability to recognize that the whole gospel is bigger than any of us, and so requires the gifts of all of us. Another building block of a loving fellowship is establishing a maturity that recognizes and welcomes the gifts of others into the mix of the church.

Building (in love). Paul closes this little section of his letter saying that such a church will build itself up in agapé, in hard-headed love which sets aside personal advancement and individual claims in order to advance the building of the fellowship that has the high calling of “body of Christ.”

Paul said, in the beginning of chapter 4, that we are called to a lead lives worthy of our calling, “making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” How many of us can say we have made every effort toward building up the church fellowship in love, more effort than we spend rending it asunder by rigid adherence to our own cherished opinions?

I pray with Paul that our fellowship may grow toward that maturity which builds itself up in agapé, which moves toward a love characterized by commitment to common faith, common purpose. My friend and fellow pastor, Mike Brown, closes his newsletter messages to his congregation with the instruction to “Be the Church!” Now that Paul has helped us understand what that means, we may take on the command as well. Dear friends in Christ: Be the Church!

Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

Copyright © 2009 Robert J. Elder
July 26, 2009

Ephesians 3:14-21

Jacques Ellul, French philosopher and theologian, once wrote a little book about prayer which he said was most certainly not a “prayer book”:

“A prayer book presupposes that the person to whom it is addressed wants to pray, already knows how to pray, and that prayer is a part of his life...But today we no longer are faced with the person who is already won over, convinced, the stuttering Christian who needs to be taught to speak yet a Christian all the same...The person of our times does not know how to pray; but much more than that, he has neither the desire nor the need to do so. He does not find the deep source of prayer within himself. I am acquainted with this man. I know him well. It is I myself.”1

Is this true? In our more honest moments are we also well acquainted with this one who neither prays nor feels much need to do so? If so, perhaps Paul’s glorious little prayer in the third chapter of Ephesians will give us reason to think again.

In speaking of God’s answer to his prayer, Paul said that God was able to accomplish more than we can ask or imagine. More than we can ask or imagine? I don’t know about you, but as a youngest child — don’t tell my brothers this — as the one that my Mom and Dad always spoiled just a little more than they did their first two children, if there was one thing I learned in life, it was that what I might ask for, and the things I might imagine could be pretty big and it wouldn’t hurt anything if they were. I remember that before Christmas, when we would be asked what we hoped to find under the tree, my brothers might ask for this or that toy, or fishing rod, or drawing pad, but I wanted an airplane, or a fire truck...not toys, mind you, but the real thing. When it comes to asking, I’ve never been backward. And my imagination has never tarried far behind. After making my requests, I would imagine myself at the controls of my new airplane, or racing through our neighborhood at the wheel of my new fire truck. The fact that I never received these extravagant presents never deterred me from imagining that I might.

So you can understand that when I read in Ephesians 3:20 the phrase “to him...who is able to accomplish far more than all we can ask or imagine,” that I have to believe this is a pretty big God! That would have come as no surprise to Paul.

Paul’s prayer in Ephesians is one of those towering prayers, filled with grand words that come tumbling down on our ears so fast that we can barely begin to grasp the significance of any of them before the next batch is cascading down on us. “According to the riches of his glory;” “strengthened in your inner being;” “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” What does it all mean? Having made this prayer on our behalf, how will our lives be different this coming Tuesday than if he had never written it at all? When I pray — perhaps you are like I am — I tend to be a bit more blunt than Paul. I rarely find myself speaking about the “riches of glory,” though I confess that prayers about other sorts of riches may have escaped my lips over my lifetime. Phrases like “strengthened in your inner being” require some sorting out for me, I can’t get a handle on them all just one time through. Paul’s high-flying language can seem to soar somewhere just above our heads. What is he praying about, really?

Well, I have been sorting through these seven verses off and on over the years, and I have come to understand that he is praying about three things, and as is the case with most prayers, his requests required not only having the sense to ask, but the imagination to know what to ask. Once we set them out, they aren’t all that difficult to understand. We can be glad that Paul prayed these three petitions.

I

That you may be strengthened

Paul prayed for strength for us, for those who read his letter. The word “you” is plural, like “all of you,” so Paul’s prayer was for the whole church, not just individual members of it, not even the first readers alone, but all who have come across it, down through the ages. “That you all may be strengthened.”

Surely there is no one here today who does not know what it is to utter a prayer for strength. A two year old is discovered sorting through the cat litter box for the third time this week; his mother mutters, “God, give me strength!” A driver is making his way along the freeway through the driving rain. Suddenly he hears a pop and his right front tire starts to make a funny slapping noise. He says, “O God, strengthen me.” A congregation discovers a tragic fire has leveled their beloved little church building. With one voice, they pray together, “O Lord, give us strength to get through this.” Prayers for strength are as common as the latest unexpected curve life has thrown at us. They come from a deep place within us, a place of assurance in which we know that the one addressed in our simple prayer is able to answer, able to help.

As part of his prayer for strength for us, Paul asked that Christ dwell in us as we are being rooted and grounded in love. Rooting is familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the life of a garden, and grounding in Paul’s Greek is an architectural term, literally “foundationing,” which is a familiar concept to anyone who has built anything larger than a doghouse. Roots and foundations are important, are the key strengths of growing things and of buildings, and both suggest a base on which something not only rests but rises. A tree grows from its roots, a building rises on the strength of its foundations, and both are apt symbols for the sort of foundational strength Paul desires for us in our relationship with Christ.

A prayer that we may be strengthened affects who we are and what we do. But this is more than a prayer for personal strength. It is a prayer that together we will be a strong church. Paul prayed for strength for fledgling little churches in an overwhelmingly pagan society. He imagined God would grant it. Two thousand years later, the church is still here, Roman society isn’t.

II

That you may have the power to comprehend

Paul prayed for a cruciform — cross-based — understanding. I once read that Paul’s theology of the meaning of the cross is bound up in this prayer for understanding. When he prayed that we might comprehend “what is the breadth and length and height and depth,” he referred to the four points of the cross of Christ, the ultimate symbol of self-sacrificing love, stretched out toward all the points of the universe. Paul asked for understanding throughout his ministry, and he came to imagine a church responding to Christ as no one else had conceived before he began his missionary work. He imagined a church which included not only Jewish believers, but Gentiles, all manner of foreigners who knew not the faith of Moses. And what he imagined in prayer came to be!

The work of Christ abolished the vertical barrier between God and people; now the church’s work in response was — and is — to abolish the horizontal barrier of one people from another. This is part of Paul’s prayer, and inasmuch as we cannot yet comprehend how some people shall become one with us in Christ, to that extent “the love of Christ...surpasses knowledge.” Christ’s love for people is larger than our abilities to communicate it or understand it. Still, our task remains the same.

Paul prayed for understanding. He imagined God would grant it. Two thousand years later we pray that prayer still, as the work of Christ is alive on every continent.

III

That you may be filled with the fullness of God

Paul prayed for the fullness of God. This is a prayer that what God has started, God will complete. Imagine a world in thrall to its creator. To imagine it is to have begun the prayer already. The fullness of God encompasses his purpose for the world, which is filled with love. Love lies at the heart of God, and the love of humanity is the way the church may respond.

So Paul prayed for strength, for understanding, for fulfillment of purpose. For all the high language surrounding them, I think these are about the most basic prayers of the human family. They encompass the desire to be able to meet life’s challenges, to understand what is at work in the events of this life, and to see one day the fulfillment of God’s full plan for the world. These encompass the sort of prayer any one of us might make, and should make!

Having concluded his prayer, Paul wrote a brief doxology concerning things made possible by the power of Christ at work within us and what it can accomplish. He offered his prayer to God, “To him who by the power at work within us...” Did you notice that phrase? The power by which God answers our prayers is the very power which is at work within us as a people of God. “To him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more...” not just the thing we ask, not just this or that, not even a bit more, but abundantly (redundantly) far more, heaps more, “than all we can ask or imagine.”

There are prayers we haven’t even thought about praying yet which God is already at work on, there are needs in this world to which God has addressed divine attention which we haven’t even run across yet. This should give us confidence that no matter how things may appear to us, our prayers are being answered already by one who is capable of answering even the prayers we should have made yet neglected to do. G.K. Chesterton once wrote,

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is...It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”2

Could be. And still he is capable of accomplishing “abundantly more...” in every life here today.

Copyright © 2009 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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1 Prayer and Modern Man, Jacques Ellul, Seabury Press, 1973, p. vi.
2 Orthodoxy, Gilbert K. Chesterton, Doubleday, Image Books, 1959, p. 60.

If He Is Here, They Will Come

Copyright © 2009 Robert J. Elder, Pastor

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 19, 2009

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

Some of us likely will remember the Kevin Costner film of 20 years ago: Field of Dreams. The key line in that movie, which became one of those cultural by-words that stayed around for quite awhile, was, “If you build it, they will come.” I can tell you that far too many businesses as well as churches have learned the error of that thinking, that people will come just because there is a nice facility. In the end, it’s the hearts that live inside the building that attract or repel people.

Mark tells us that “they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.” But not for long. Every pastor can tell stories of dinners interrupted, conversations stopped short, attempts to dash home for a quick dinner frustrated by the insistent demands of people who come to the church looking for the help they think Jesus will make available to them. And if they spot you before they run into Jesus, well, that’s just how it goes.

I remember once reading about a pastor who “resigned from a suburban parish where relentless demands on his time and energy were beginning to wear him down. He left to become a missionary on the coast of Maine. In his new position he visits small clusters of Christians in remote locations. He reports that in many ways his ministry is the same as it always has been: he preaches, teaches, visits the sick. But there is this difference: between ports of call he travels long distances by boat. Between sermons he can listen to the wind. Before teaching another class he can study the horizon. After visiting the sick he is anointed with sea spray. Interspersed with his demanding pastoral duties he takes a watery road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”[1] I have heard of a pastor who takes a week every year to hike in the mountains alone. He asks his wife to save all the newspapers that have come during the week of his absence. Upon returning, he reads each newspaper. That way he can remind himself how readily the world and the people in it continue on without him.

Mark declares, “And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.” Doesn’t that sound good? In Mark's Gospel, Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee so many times that it is hard to discern the pattern and motive behind the itinerary. Until the sixth chapter, that is, when the reason for the crossings is clear: the disciples need a break.[2] Following the teeming demands of ministry, the exhausted disciples were due for a retreat to charge their batteries. Sociologists call this “compassion fatigue.” Just prior to this, remember, “...many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.” Before the first spoonful of food had reached their mouths, here came the tap on the shoulder and the request, please, just this once, please help, won’t you help? So it was time for a discipleship retreat, and off they went to a deserted place. What a great plan. But no sooner had they tied up at the dock than “...many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.”

If Jesus is there, people will come. That’s how it has always been. Try any replacement for Jesus, anything that points to something other than Jesus, and the church ceases being a church. It is, at the last, the true test of a church. Over time, if Jesus is not present there, no one will come. Oh, it might take a long while for some who are just in the habit of coming around to stop, but over time it will happen.

I remember reading about a once-wealthy church in Pittsburgh. It was a large stone edifice, built in what we might think of as a sort of Presbyterian version of an English gothic style. It had huge, vaulted ceilings, and at one time was one of the largest open spaces under one roof of any building in the city. The lettering over the entrance where the arched Byzantine doors once stood now welcomes not worshipers, but people seeking a parking place: “Southside Parking Garage,” says the sign over the opening. With a straight face, the developer of the project said, “It was an ideal space for conversion.”[3]

Apparently this had been a church where people had parked for years: parked their money but not their bodies, parked their children but not their cars, and eventually the children grew up and nothing was parked there any more other than the left-over money of dead people, which kept the facility going on life support long after the heart had quit beating on its own. With the sort of funds they had, you could continue to offer programs for years without having to be bothered with a congregation. But in the end, the aging trustees, who were all that was left of the church, closed it anyway, since parking was all it was good for. Now it is truly a drive-in church.

I’ve been in other defunct churches. They always strike me as a sort of sad testimony, no matter how cheery — even inevitable — their transformation into some other kind of business. Neighborhoods change, people come and people go. But if the heart of Jesus had been celebrated and worshiped there, couldn’t the church have changed along with the neighborhood? This is what I always wonder. Often they are transformed into restaurants, another unintended symbol of the body of Christ which had once been gathered in those places around the communion table. I know of another church in New Jersey, founded by people who were mad at their former church, so they gathered in anger and separation. Ultimately, the next generations forgot what the fight had been about, and since fighting was the glue that had held it together, the church came apart. Literally, it’s beams and timbers were dismantled and reused in what are now many fine homes in the area.

I once wrote to my former congregation about my visit to a small country parish in Wales during a vacation there. A sort of Stephen King cemetery surrounds this ancient building which exudes local history from every stone. And that may be part of the problem. It stands more like an artifact than a congregation. Sunday worship when we were there numbered 12, 4 of which were our party of not-very-competent Presbyterian-cum-Anglicans. The idea that a small church is a better place to become acquainted and feel at home was given the lie in this place.

But the very next week found us in London at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the 11:00 AM “sung mass.” It was high church at its best, and the Spirit was alive in the place, clearly a place of worship where all were welcomed and encouraged to take part. Jesus was there, and they came.

“They went away to a deserted place by themselves.” Sometimes this sounds like the very thing we need, to get away, to be alone. And sometimes we do. I know that many folks in congregations who don’t disappear in the winter for Palm Desert or similar warmer climes may be likely to be gone some time now during the summer. But such separation and self-tending is meant always to function as a servant of ministry, not as its main point. The disciples and Jesus were allowed precious little time to themselves in deserted places. The need of the world to be near Jesus was just too overpoweringly great.

“Mark says that Jesus and his disciples had come willingly to this deserted place. They were exhausted from ministry among the needy multitudes. They were seeking rest, retreat, a July vacation from the rigors of their work. Yet when they got to the deserted place, it was quickly filled with more multitudes who came clamoring after Jesus. The crowds did not come, like the disciples, in order to get away from life; they followed Jesus here because they were desperate to survive life. Jesus looked on them and quickly saw that they were harassed and helpless, ‘like sheep without a shepherd.’ Here were the oppressed, the hurting and the poor, come out to this desert hoping for a blessing from Jesus.”[4]

When Jesus got to the shore on the other side of the lake he saw that the great throng had anticipated his next move and was waiting there for him. When he looked out on them and had compassion on them because they looked to him for all the world like a bunch of bleating lambs whose shepherd had left them alone in the wilderness, he realized that this sorry gathering of people had been paying rent to absent theological landlords for far too long. He decided that he would teach them something right then and there about what it means to have a real shepherd. If we had been there, we would probably have been like the rest of the crowd, anticipating a free meal, or at least a healing or some other miracle. But Jesus didn’t do that, not yet. He first did what the Shepherd was called to do for his people. He “began to teach them many things.”

There is but one true teacher. The rest that we who have followed him have to add is but commentary. The ministry of the church is not in the hands of pastors, nor even boards and committees. Not now any more than it ever has been. It rests largely in your hands; your able, fallible, caring, failing, tentative, willing, reluctant hands. My long-time friend, Jim Wharton, who taught at the seminary at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, once pointed out that in the biblical story, God is singularly unimpressed by the differences between clergy and lay people on points of competence, fitness, equipment, credentials, or status. On one occasion, (in the book of Joshua) a rather harried prostitute named Rahab was able to minister to Israel; on another, a humble shepherd boy named David became minister to a king (I Samuel 16:14 ff); on another, a famous prophet named Elijah endured the indignity of receiving the ministry of a cackling flock of crows (I Kings 17:4 ff). The possibility of ministry is as near for any of God’s people as the next human being.[5]

Which brings us to the commissioning to which we have responded as Christian people.

Hospitality is among the highest marks of the presence of Jesus in a place, the New Testament is filled with testimonies to this fact. I have been through the mill with transients over 25 years of ministry, all pastors have, I have dealt with the con artists, the demanding ones that try to make you feel guilty, the ones who have a knack for showing up as you prepare to leave for a well-deserved hour at home before returning for the evening round of meetings. But sometimes, it is different, not a hand-out, as the ads used to say, but a hand.

So Mark’s gospel causes us to consider this today, this presence of our Lord in this place. Because we know that if the needy and the harassed and the helpless ones are among us in our community, our church and even our homes, surely Jesus cannot be far away. If they come, he is here, giving us the opportunity to be a blessing even as we seek to be blessed. Amen.

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[1] “Watching from the Boat,” by Martin Copenhaver, Christian Century, June 29, 1994.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Thanks to my friend, Dr. George Chorba, for sharing stories of “converted” churches.

[4] “The Loving Shepherd,” a sermon by William Willimon, Duke University Chapel, 7/20/97. [5] Biblical Basis for Ministry, Earl E. Shelp et. al., Westminster Press, 1981, p. 61.